Co-worker Sabotage! How One Savvy Professional Turned a Dirty Trick Around

A girlfriend recently had a very interesting situation occur in which a co-worker consciously tried to make her look bad in front of her peers and her boss.

Ever had that happen to you? Read about the professionally savvy way she handled the situation.

“Jane” had worked with her team to pull together a report for field sales to use in their sales efforts. Since the field team hadn’t kept the customer account database updated, the information was obviously not 100% accurate. Her plan was for the field to use the report as a “starting point,” review the sales potential of the accounts, and provide Jane’s internal team with information to update the database.

One field manager (“Tom”) met with Jane to discuss his displeasure at the amount of inaccuracies in the database. Jane calmly listened to all his complaints and acknowledged the frustration he was feeling. Once he ran out of steam, she explained that her team had no way of knowing the up-to-date information about each account, only the sales reps would know.

She explained how they hoped to relieve the administrative burden by updating the database for the field team, once the field provided them with the missing information. Tom left her office appearing to be satisfied.

A few days later on a team conference call, Jane briefed everyone about the plan to ensure a smooth database update. The discussion was positive with many managers promising to work together to implement Jane’s plan. Tom then jumped into the conference call like a bitter child throwing a wet blanket over the proceedings.

He brought up all the same negative comments he had already explained in Jane’s office earlier in the week. He vented to everyone on the call and then proceeded to bash Jane and her team for the quality of the report and for not taking on even more of the administrative burden.

To Jane’s credit, she maintained her composure and reiterated the game plan on how her team would help. Although most participants left the call feeling annoyed and frustrated, they were impressed with Jane’s professionalism.

What would YOU have done in this situation? Here’s what Jane did:

After the conference call ended, Jane took a deep breath, went for a walk down the hall to collect her thoughts and to shake off her anger, and then contacted Tom to discuss what had just happened.

She calmly and unemotionally let Tom know that his outburst had not only caused a very positive conference call to turn negative, but that it made it appear that he was trying to make her team look bad.

She then asked him if that was the intent of his comments. Tom was surprised at her direct approach, but what could he say? He “back-peddled,” and tried poorly to explain why he did what he had done.

Ultimately, by being firm and professional, Jane got what she wanted…an apology from Tom for his actions along with a promise never to behave that way again.

She concluded the discussion with positive comments about the need for them to work together as a team and that she was looking forward to continuing to work with him and hoped they could both put this incident behind them for good.

The next day, while in a one-on-one discussion with her boss, she described to him how she had handled the situation with Tom. He congratulated her on her professionalism and thanked her for proactively dealing with the uncomfortable situation.

Here are the “keys to success” pulled from this example to help when dealing with these kinds of situations.

Always remain calm when someone verbally “attacks” you.

Listen to their complaints with an open mind and a closed mouth.

Do not interrupt them – hear them out until they run out of things to say.

Do not get defensive.

Acknowledge their issues and pain; acknowledge that you heard what they said.

Try to see the situation from their point of view.

Don’t approach someone for a discussion until you can think rationally.

Immediately address issues, do not wait and hope they eventually just go away.

Stand up for yourself in a professional, classy manner.

How have you handled co-worker sabotage? Share your inspiring story with others in the comments section below.